To celebrate the occasion a launch event was held in Tokyo, where the core members of the team were introduced and given a chance to say a few words to the fans. During the event, after a hilarious message by former president Yoichi “Uncle Housing” Wada (the reason behind the nickname is that he always used to show off classified housing artwork during the Letter from the Producer Live broadcasts) a short trailer showcasing the housing feature and a wide variety of furniture was shown. Housing is scheduled to be implemented in patch 2.1.

In addition to that, Naoki Yoshida held a final speech during which he apologized for the server issues happened during the three days of early access, remembered the three years of hard work gone into creating the game and thanked the fans for their patience and faith in the development team, asking them to continue supporting the team. In a definitely emotional moment, the ever-smiling producer was moved to tears as he tried hard to keep his composure (You can check the translation of the whole event made by Reinheart Valentine here. The relevant part is towards the end).

Those like me that followed the game since the previous launch through all the problems and hardships, won’t have any difficulty in understanding how he felt. I have to admit that I teared up a little bit myself. When I interviewed Yoshida-san at Gamescom it was very easy to perceive how much he cares about the game and its community.

You can check out both the housing trailer and Yoshida-san’s final moving speech below. They’re both worth watching.